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Notable & Quotable

Updated Jan. 26, 1999 12:01 a.m. ET

From the International Herald Tribune, Jan. 8:

PARIS--"Truths!" Charles de Gaulle is supposed to have shouted. "Did you think I could have created a (Free French) government against the English and the Americans with truths? You make History with ambition, not with truths."

The quote is from a new book by Thierry Pfister, a French editor, who uses it to illustrate his thesis that for the French mind, lying...